Circle of Healing Redux

Something that I feel has been overlooked is that there seems to be a feeling that raid instances right now at 70 (post nerf) are representative of what raid instances are like at level 80. A lot of players, right now, are a little overgeared for the content that theyÃ¢â‚¬â„¢re doing (again, due to the nerf).

I was first exposed to this idea in my first year of psychology. The general premise here is that people, animals, or even machines will choose the path of least resistance or effort in order to get to their goal. Applying this to healing, weÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ll see one person taking a shot for 2000 damage for whatever reason. I myself have been known to tap CoH once or twice to bring that one personÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s health back up. Is that a loss of mana efficiency? You bet it is. But efficiency goes out the door if your mana regeneration is able to offset the mana loss within seconds.

Could I have used a Flash Heal? Yeah but it takes casting time. How about a Renew? Yeah but it takes about 15 seconds for the full duration to kick in Circle of Healing heals that minor damage extremely quickly and leaves me open for spell options without causing me to wait for the spell to go off or eat a channel or something.

This is partly the case because of current nerfed raid content and the way our spells work. ItÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s a smart heal, itÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s the fastest heal, and itÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s brain dead easy. IÃ¢â‚¬â„¢m sure we can all agree on that.

With the complete gear reset at 80, I strongly doubt weÃ¢â‚¬â„¢re going to be able to get away with non-stop CoH casting. I know I couldnÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t. I was extremely limited with my mana regen and my overall mana pool. I confess I did start with PvP gear and I encountered some difficulty then. Yet, after daily Naxx and OS runs on 10s and 25s, I amassed a decent collection of PvE healing gear. I still found it difficult and strenuous. As this was largely a pickup group, maybe I was overcompensating in some areas.

The benefit of Circle of Healing is that it can heal a lot of players really fast. The cost of Circle of Healing should be the fact that it taxes your mana pool.

IÃ¢â‚¬â„¢m not quite sure if thatÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s possible. I can see why they want to include the 6s cooldown because there are a staggering number of players using it (at 70 and at 80 when I played). Maybe if they included a scaling cost with the spell it would be acceptable. The ability to heal a lot of raid damage really fast is an excellent tool to have. But it should come with a severe price or penalty. I donÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t think time, a wonderful resource that it is, should be the case. Perhaps base cost + a percentage of healing done in that one cast? I donÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t know. IÃ¢â‚¬â„¢m not a game developer.

Regardless of what they do, Priests will easily remain the most diverse class. IÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ll continue to play mine well into Wrath. Even if they do bring in the CoH cooldown, we still have Holy Nova and Prayer of Healing. Zusterke, on Plusheal, started some preliminary work on Holy Nova and itÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s effectiveness.

By adding the glyph of holy nova, the spell has become quite a powerful healing spell. It is able to output more healing than circle of healing, up to a point where it rivals prayer of healing. The recent mana cost reduction boosted this spell even further where it has become a mana efficient spell, in comparison to the priest’s other AoE spells.

He might shoot me if he feels itÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s a little outdated. But not much has changed yet so I think heÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s definitely in the ballpark (or ice rink).

Epic

About me

My name is Matticus and this is my World of Warcraft blog. Here you can read about my thoughts regarding healing as a priest. As a guild master, I also write about guild and raid related topics. The blog has expanded to include thoughts from other regular contributors. The aim of this blog is to help you grow and improve. My unending goal is to have something relevant and useful in every post. or more, you can check out my columns on WoW Insider. Visit theGuildmasters to talk shop with other GMs, raid leaders, and officers. Or if you're looking to join a guild, check out my guild Conquest.